Automatic seat belts

[Satty]

Talk about a blast from the past, I saw an old Saturn the other day with those stupid automatic seat belts. They still worked too, I watched the guy get out of the car because I'm a creep like that. Or I was in awe. I hated those things in moms old Saturn, so glad they're gone.

[Intrepidation]

What was up with that fad? I've seen late model Shadows with them, Subarus, first gen Quests. They suck and tend not to work after so many years.

[Drew Dowdell]

it was fun to watch people forget about them and get strangled.

[FAPTurbo]

I still have horrible memories of being put into a Ford Escort when I was little. And compounding them was the trauma of being locked into place by automatic belts.

[Satty]

What was up with that fad? I've seen late model Shadows with them, Subarus, first gen Quests. They suck and tend not to work after so many years.

It was a federal mandate for a while, either airbags or automatic seat belts, and the belts were cheaper. Thats why only a few cars made after airbags became mandatory have had the auto belts. It had just been a long time since I'd seen a car that had them and they worked.

[Robert Hall]

The dumbest implementation of them had to be the GM models with the seat belts attached to the doors. Ford had a weird mix of some models w/ airbags, some with the motorized belts for a few years.

[vonVeezelsnider]

Illegal in Canada, the whole time. Not allowed, no way. Notably, vehicles such as the Quest, Villager, Corolla, Saturn and whatnot from the states equipped with such belts are deemed inadmissible, even now. Can't be imported. Canadian Spec models had to be equipped with standard style seatbelts for sale in Canada and US models don't penetrate the border. Canada didn't bend its auto-safety mandates a little to allow the potentially weaker mechanisms to be implemented into vehicles for use here.

Always remember seeing them on cars as a kid during trips to California and Arizona but never understood why I didn't see them at home... now I know why.

Edited March 13, 2011 by vonVeezelsnider

[bobo]

My '91 Integra had them. I didn't mind them too much. They were known in the car magazines as motorized mice. The sad thing is that they were inferior to regular old seatbelts, and a lot of people wouldn't bother latching the separate lap belt. As moltie mentioned, GM's execution of passive door-mounted seatbelts borders on shameful. They met the letter of the law but nobody used them that way, and they felt too loose on sedans and blocked side visibility when nobody was sitting on the passenger seat.

[ocnblu]

Yup, mom's '92 SL2 had those nuisances in it. I can see how they were potentially worse for safety than regular belts, especially if the lap belt wasn't fastened. And those door-mounted belts... horrible. If the door came open, the person could spill out of the car like in those horrifying 1960's crash test dummy videos.

I've recently seen, second-hand, how much a person can get thrown around inside a car when not wearing a seatbelt. We had an Altima t-boned at the right front corner. The lady's body was thrown toward the right (you go in the direction of the impact first, then bounce in the opposite direction), and her body destroyed the center console. Her head went into the roof, slamming the dome light above the rearview mirror and putting a dent, outward, in the roof. The car was lost, totalled, and she was still stiff and sore when she same to get her belongings out. She was lucky it wasn't worse.

Edited March 13, 2011 by ocnblu

[§carlet §wordfish]

I never knew the seatbelts on the Corsica were designed to remain latched until I saw an old MotorWeek review. It still makes little sense.

[Turbojett]

I remember automatic seatbelts...horrible things they were. luckily, my parents never had a '90's car that was so equipped, but I always thought they were kinda dangerous, even from a young age. but I was more scared of the fingers-getting-pinched issue than the strangling issue.

[Camino LS6]

I first ran across them in a then-new Benz in about '82/'83.

Got in, fired it up, and this thing buzzed its way into my peripheral vision near my temple.

Kinda freaked me out.

After a few seconds, it buzzed its way back where it came from.

Never drove another car with them.

[bobo]

The Benz belts were a bit different in that on the SEC coupes, an arm brought the belts closer to the driver to manually buckle up. It's a quite an elegant solution to making it easier to buckle up in a hardtop coupe, though seat-mounted belts probably would have been better yet.

[Robert Hall]

The Benz belts were a bit different in that on the SEC coupes, an arm brought the belts closer to the driver to manually buckle up. It's a quite an elegant solution to making it easier to buckle up in a hardtop coupe, though seat-mounted belts probably would have been better yet.

The '84-95 E-class coupe has those also, they work well... not the same kind of automatic belt as the crap in the late '80s Escorts, Mazdas, etc.. I missed out on the automatic belt craze..went from cars w/ normal 3 point belts to cars w/ airbags back in the day..

Edited March 23, 2011 by Cubical-aka-Moltar

[GMTruckGuy74]

I never knew the seatbelts on the Corsica were designed to remain latched until I saw an old MotorWeek review. It still makes little sense.

Yeah, when I bought my '92 Cavalier Z24 in May '94, I didn't realize for about two years you were suppose to leave the belts buckled in! I was always concerned about how great they would work in an accident, but luckily never had to try them out. I was happy to see GM get rid of them by the mid-'90s with redesigns that included airbags.